5 Answers
5

The fastest reply to a question. Relevant to how Stack Overflow sorted answers until around August 27 2009. The original sorting was 'number of votes' followed by 'oldest answer first'. This meant that the first answerer was given a natural advantage as their answer was at the top of the page.

This could be seen as a disadvantage to answerers that took longer to write their response to a question. Although their answer might be 'better', the first answer given would often be upvoted first.

SCITE - Slowest Cheater in the East

Relevant to how Stack Overflow currently sorts answers. The current sorting is 'number of votes' followed by 'random'. This means there is no longer preference given to the age of an answer.

This could be gamed when a user copied and/or combined other answers and then strategically vote other answers down. Someone visiting the question would see this combined answer as the best one and vote it up, placing it to the top of the answer list. Once the gamer had enough votes that would remove the downvotes from other answers.

The length of time for an up or downvote before changes were locked was dramatically reduced in an attempt to alleviate this problem.

Doesn't FGITW also apply to folks posting a partial answer to get into that "first" slot, and only then start editing (possibly within the 5 minute grace period) to change it into a true answer?
–
ArjanMar 31 '12 at 12:05

1

Laughed about the vague estimation in "sorted answers until around August 27 2009".
–
EverythingRightPlaceNov 14 '13 at 12:33

AFAIK, the idea is that you copy the FGITW's answer, then vote them down, thus earning votes and the misplaced-respect of your peers. Although I would have thought that the fastest cheater would do better than the slowest.

It doesn't even always have to involve downvoting. If you post an answer and do not collect any votes, I can come in and copy your answer 20 minutes later. Because we will both have 0 score, our sort order will be randomized so there is the opportunity for me to appear above you, therefore I can collect easy upvotes from people who are too lazy to pay attention to timestamps. If I appear first it is only natural to assume that I posted first. It is also easy to assume that someone could PUNISH you for posting a duplicate, when you were actually the originator.
–
TheTXIAug 27 '09 at 11:18